The Limits of Power by Andrew Bacevich

Introduction

Andrew Bacevich is a conservative historian who spent 23 years working in the U.S. Army He also lost his son in Iraq last year. Bacevich writes, "And the American appetite for freedom has grown, our penchant for empire has grown." Bacevich's new book on "Power of Limits" examines the historical and theoretical reasons for this evolution by suggesting that the excess of foreign policy in recent years is much more deeply rooted in the culture of the United States that its critics have been willing to acknowledge. His portrait deeply pessimistic and really convincing should help break the idea that all the blame, the blunders and bad intentions are to put on the account of the Bush administration and a simple change to the presidency will alleviate structural problems facing the U.S.

Description and Analysis

Bacevich begins with a brief history of the birth and expansion of the United States across the continent. He resists the urge to see the current policy as the betrayal of a mythical golden age in American history in Washington, a time when American leaders would have had only mild and humble motivations. The author explains those interests leading the U.S. to expropriate indigenous to finally climb to the rank of major world power. However, the author notes, this expansionism were often correlated with the increase of wealth and expansion of democratic freedoms for the citizens of the United States. One criticism Bacevich is essential that this correlation between expansion, abundance of wealth and the extension of freedom is no longer operational today because crisis situations social, economic, political and military reinforce each other. The author describes what he sees as "a crisis of debauchery" that represents its most radical argument against the general political paradigm in the United States. The problems of American foreign policy, says Andrew Bacevich, have their root in issues of identity in the United States.

Andrew Bacevich is the first to admit openly that we are in a process of change. Culturally conservative man had previously worked in publishing as the Weekly Standard and National Review, in addition to being Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, at some point in the 1990's realized that his potential conservative allies foreign policy had been in love with the idea of U.S. military power and a remarkable ability to change the world. Suddenly they started a journey that left him in bewilderment. Declared supporter of the Cold War in those years began to review the past of the United States, and since then has continued to re-examine and reconsider.

What he discovered in his research was the U.S. Empire, and thus was titled book published in 2002. In 2005, there was devastating and pervasive language on the fantasies of global military supremacy of the United States, The New American Militarism. How Americans Are Seduced by War. The text would have interested me regardless of who had written, but faith that the author's biographical background gave him an undoubted interest ...